Things, they are a’ growin’

This…

…is no more.

When I first got the terrarium, the “dormant” moss that came in the kit seemed a bit beyond “dormant”. It was brown. Period. After doing all the right things to resurrect the stuff, it wasn’t doing much. It stubbornly remained brown.

I finally gave up (sort of). All that old, brown stuff? It got removed. It got replaced. The little terrarium now looks like this:

Yeah much better!

And the dormant moss? Not one to give up completely, I experimented. When I replanted, I rinsed excess dirt off the new moss in a bowl of water. I dunked the dormant moss in that soup of water, bits of moss and mossy dirt, then planted it in a new terrarium along with a second type of fresh moss. The result?

Yep, the moss behind the tombstones, transplanted October 1, has gone from brown and dormant to green and growing… in one week. After nearly two months of inactivity. The moss in front is the newer moss.

Moral of the story? If you’re gonna buy a terrarium kit, plan on buying live moss rather than the dry, dormant stuff they include. Obviously, it wasn’t totally dead, it just needed a mossy blood transfusion. Or something.